Mostly event announcements, news, and bicycle related activist opinions... Download Critical Mass flyers and posters, or upload your own Email vancouvercm~AT~gmail~DOT~com for a posting password Yes, we ride the last Friday of every month!

31.12.10

New Years Eve Critical Mass

Be there or be Square! 5:30pm at the Vancouver Art Gallery. This will be a silly ride with a smaller group of really fun people.

24.12.10

the horse's mouth

20.12.10

Xmas fun local

Some fun goings on at the Little Mountain Gallery this week. If you are needing the Xmas presents they have locally made crafts and also on Thursday a Free Store. I always ride past this place on my commute to work. It's a good neighbourhood public space to support. Just thought I'd mention that to people in case you don't know of it or forgot cause it's a little out of the way.

11.12.10

Come to the VACC Member's Party & Art Show - Dec. 12

The Vancouver Area CyclingCoalition is incredibly proud of the year 2010 has been, and we knowthat we couldn't have done it without your support.In celebration of a year of good work, and in appreciation of you andall our members, we're pleased to invite you to our annual memberparty, and our first ever art show.Come by theBritannia Community Centre onSunday Dec. 12, from 6:00 - 9:00pm and help us celebrate awonderful year. If you've got art lovers on your holiday gift givinglists, keep them in mind while you check out our selection ofbike-themed art. The commission on works sold will support our Bike toSchool 2011 Program and we're pleased to have a small collection ofphotography, painting, and mixed media pieces.Most importantly, we want to share our success. We've passed each otheron the bike routes, and waited together at stop lights, now we have achance to chat over a glass of holiday cheer. If you'd like to bring adozen cookies for the table, we all know how hungry cyclists appreciatethem! ;)Don't forget, volunteers with Bike to Work this year get a free drinkticket, and if you haven't bought or renewed your membership yet, youcan stop by and do so at the door. Gift memberships will also beavailable.All the best for the season to you and yours. Happy New Year, andhopefully, we'll see you Sunday!

I Support Wikileaks and so Should You!

I wasn't going to write about this - it's about internet freedom more than in the city streets - but I feel now that I must given the ridiculous news I just heard on CBC radio. I've just heard that now INTERPOL is declaring Julian Assange to be an international Criminal that they want to catch - high priority! This is Crazy. INTERPOL doesn't deal with the type of crime he is being accused of. What is happening is that large governments are trying to defame and shut down Wikileaks using what I am convinced are lies. (The charges of rape against him are very suspicious, not something INTERPOL usually concerns itself with, probably phoney, and frankly who cares if this guy is a jerk - wikileaks needs to be there with him or not)Wikileaks is an organisation that does nothing new. They simply release embarrassing secrets on the internet as people have been doing since the internet began. However, now that the Internet is less private (the Facebook/Google era) and sharing information is more important than ever Wikileaks is stepping up to the plate to try and protect anonymous whistleblowers. They try and manage the information they leak too, to redact private names (when possible) and otherwise give some order to the flow of information.

The problem is wikileaks twice this year released major batches of Classified US State Secrets about the War in Afghanistan and later about diplomatic secrets. This is embarrassing to the US and many other large military governments. In order to protect their secrecy and bad practices these governments are trying to go after and shut down Wikileaks rather than clean up their own human rights abuses and other unacceptable "secrets."

So, I've made a donation to Wikileaks and I think that if you can afford it you should too. It is getting expensive for them to host these files and to fight legal battles to protect whistleblowers.

Here is the information from wikileaks donations page as of November 30, 2010 (The 11th Anniversary of the day we all shut down the WTO) Please try the page link first because my blog information will undoubtedly become out of date soon. However, if enemies of wikileaks (Keepers of secrets that should be aired) manage to shut down the website using DDOS as they have been in the past then I'm backing it up here so you can use it and still donate. I have no idea if the paypal button will work or not. When I clicked on that from the original page it was not in English. Personally, I used option #1 but I suspect that #2 is a lot more secure. Iceland recently passed some good laws to protect whistleblowers after having their economy destroyed by rich robberbarons who used secrecy to get away with it.

Donations

WikiLeaks brings truth to the world by publishing fact-based stories without fear or favor.You can help support our independent media by donating financially. Our organisation exists because of the work of many volunteers who have contributed thousands of hours to building WikiLeaks from the ground up. But we still need donations to pay for computers, expert programmers and other bills. You choose how much you can donate, we don't recommend any particular amount. Just do what you think is right. There are four ways to donate:

The government is spreading all sorts of character defamation and disinformation to stop wikileaks however they can. Wikileaks even took seriously the claim (bogus I think) that the information they release might endanger lives of individuals such as Afghan civilians or US soldiers. They were willing to redact details if the government would be diplomatic with them (the same government willing to be diplomatic with dictators and kill in national interest) but obviously the US is more interested in defaming wikileaks than actually protecting anyone's safety:Letters between Wikileaks and the U.S. Government published by New York TimesJust an antiwar article about wikileaks that I think makes the (should be obvious but somehow isn't) point that transparency is crucial to peace and real democracy:Can WikiLeaks Help Save Lives?Update:

Anonymous is taking down visa, mastercard, paypal, amazon websites after they withdraw service to wikileaks -

Operation Payback Anon ops is down

Kind of a cyber war going on.

Don't be afraid to support the ideas that are going to bring us a more democratic society.

Update Dec 10The Guardianespecially, Huffington Post and CBS are some mainstream news sources that are doing a good job keeping up with this "Cablegate" Story. many other mainsteam news outlets seem to be hostile to wikileaks - maybe because the exclusive scoop was given to competitors? They offer a lot of noise about the issue being a soap opera rather than an important struggle for openness. Smaller more anoymous websites seem to be often overloaded either by DDOS or just popularity. There are torrents on the wikileaks site, on piratebay, isohunt and others surely. Please post any important links you may find. I'm seeding the torrent wikileaks insurance but it's frustrating to not be able to open it. Everyone should be seeding it though!

Here is the current wikileaks info http://213.251.145.96/cablegate.html but i suspect that changes sometimes. Actually there seem to be better torrents there than elsewhere. That page took me a while to find but its the best really.

Update Dec 11I've finally found the software that the so called hacktivists use to attack enemies of wikileaks. The software is called Low Orbit Ion Cannon and I had seen it mentioned before but the name is so nonsensical I ignored it. Google that term. There is some stupid, silly, unreliable and offensive info on it on Encyclopedia Dramatica that is however also useful if you can tollerate the immature Anon culture language. I would suggest using the Java version but so far I can't find it. Sourceforge windoze version and Github windoze version is the newest (I've never used that site) Just follow the instructions. (Choose the binary version if you don't know what the source version is)

The reality behind the Assange "rape" accusations - 'sex by surprise' is not rape as we call it. Basically there is a sexual disagreement between him and two women that because of Sweden's unique legal system is disputed in a court room. How this became an interpol warrant for "rape" is amazing.